santa monica. the good old days of slalom trucks. val surf was a mecca for equipment.

today at "skate boarding" have progressed since the time of this film. love seeing all those circa 1970's automobiles. funny when kid bumps into female walking out a grocery store.

“…this is the way it usually goes. And it really isn’t that much fun to fall down and get hurt all the time and everybody will hate you.” Great line!
Anyway, I totally agree that the parts that are meant to be funny are really very funny, despite the overall seriousness of its message.

Wow, desert boots on a skate board. Been there, done that. Talk about taking you back. Banana boards from PayLess, no padding, crepe soled shoes, no helmet... amazing we survived. No, this is not funny. What it does is show the early days of the sport, before WE started thinking about the future, or possably lack of. I remember riding the ambulance with a friend that didn't make it on a long down hill. He went down, hit his head and lost all feeling from the neck down. 35 years later, he still needs someone to feed him. WEAR A HELMET, PLEASE.

If you don't think this is funny, you have ZERO sense of humor

love the music

9 min, 14 sec

Ok it's not funny, but it sure is underrated.

This film looks like it was saved just in time. It's not "Citizen Kane", But it's a fun time-capsule with great footage. Thank you Rick for preserving this fun film.

RaDiCaL video, dude! Takes me back to my youth - banana boards and any incline we could find in the city. Too bad my bones couldn't handle the fall nowadays.

Sid Davis Productions was actually getting fairly competent by the 70's if this film is any indication. I can't help but wonder if Sid himself had passed on producing and directing duties to others by the 70's and also if this was still produced under his infamous $1000 film budget.

Gone are the cheaply acted outings and heavy-handed, moralistic tales of the 50's. This film gets its point across through simple demonstration (with, as others have mentioned, excellent tracking camera work) and a few sped-up shorts. While I think you could disagree with some of its message (Kneepads, gloves, etc. are NOT the sureproof protection from injury the film makes them out to be, for one), it doesn't try to somehow moralize its message, and a great deal of time is spent just showing off moves, helping to assure some kids might actually watch it all!

First minute or so is the best if you ask me -- a great introduction with a good music track. It's a shame the Prelinger print apparently is damaged -- some small sections in the beginning are missing, causing the music track to have to skip as well.

Surprisingly mellow Sid Davis production covering skateboarding safety, circa 1975. If you have ever seen the documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, you'll recognized the surfing influenced skating moves displayed in this film. For that alone, this makes this a wonderful time capsule.

There are a couple slightly odd sequences of Mack Sennett-style slapstick showing how not to skate, and the consequences for not wearing safety equipment. There is also an amusing bit that highlights the changes in skating attitudes from the 1970s, were they admonish that skating on the street is not fun, but rather advocate skateparks or a reasonable facsimilie. The practicing on how to fall of a board is also a bit odd.

However, the basic advice about wearing padding and checking your board is still good today. That, at least, shows that some things never change.

Can you imagine these guys with their helmets (I'm not talking about just their hair), their elbow and knee pads and their 'tricks' going into a competition today? They'll be laughed off I tell you!

Seriously though, this is a fun aniquated film that dealt with skateboarding for it's time. The one thing that really caught me were the tricks that they were doing, like the whirly-twirly thing and the ever popular Handstand On The Skateboard trick. We don't see that nowadays, it's all about air now.. A great neat little film, it's reccomended!

This film is quaint, a real product of its time. It also has some very impressive features that in a way forecast the Z-boys film. Close to the beginning there is a tracking shot from behind, whrer the camera follows a skater zigzagging through a line of orange pylons. The skater's moves are great, but it occurred to me that the camera operator was duplicating the the moves to keep up, and the shot was steady with no bumps or jitters. The sped-up accident sequences are very clever too, being both funny and punctuative of minor acidents. In all, another example of first rate filming in the '70s.

This is a skateboard safety film, being that it's a Sid Davis film you might be expecting some horible things to happen to the boarder, but surprisingly it's pretty mellow. It's a good film with a few odd parts (such as how the instructor teaches viewers how to fall properly) it's narated by an actual skateboarder so that definatly helps. So you may be wondering why the 3 star rating? well this film is from the 70's (or so I'm told) and this is probobly around the time these film makers started to "get" that the old ways of shooting weren't the most effective so what we're left with is a film that actually dates pretty well but not for it's benefit, if your looking for campy humor don't look here, however if you want to see a surprisingly well done safety film about skateboarding than this is for you.

Excellent 70's skate footage encouraging kids to wear protective gear and to stay off the street!! Like the other reviewer on here stated, this film really shows off skateboardings surfing roots with all of the carving manuevers they perform on the banked playground walls (or cement wave). The narrator for this movie states "You just can't have any fun skateboarding on crowded streets, it's just too dangerous". How wrong he is!! Anyone who appreciates skateboardings colorfull history will love this film.